Recently I started using Visual Studio 2010, if you follow me on twitter you probably know that this hasnt been a nice transition for me (apologies for the cursing btw) I ve had many crashes, and I m pretty sure I m not alone, not only a quick search in twitter will reflect this (see image below, the only marked twitt is about a fix for something) , but a some of my co-workers had one or another problem.
It would be naive to think all the issues have the same source, and I know that many are related to the plugins ( I use Resharper with xUnit extensions and AnkSvn). What I m trying to say is that this post is not to bash Visual Studio, to be fair the IDE is pretty flashy, shiny, even amazing…. but you know what I want options, something I can rely on and that I can bend to my will. Lets elaborate on that.
Using resharper means I m used to using shortcuts, templates and whatnot, I know I should be able to bend an IDE to do what I want so I can code faster, be focused on what I m doing. **On the other hand **I can also see that having a comon IDE within a group means we can share tricks and learn about each other practises.
So today I saw this post by Rob Connery and I cant help but wonder, Is Vim the right way to go?, no idea but I know I m ready to give it another try. However Id iek to set my expectations. I think what I would like is a more modular VS (where I can turn things off).
Although it s a pain, the Add Reference Dialog **speed is not my main issue, it takes so long to add a reference that at least it makes me think “Do you really want to add that dependecy?**” I would prefer if it wouldnt happen tho.
So, what do I want ouf of my IDE:
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To write code, quickly
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to rely on it, if it crashes, updates, looses references that It handles it elegantly
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To get feedback about the code I write quickly
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yes to intellisense , I m a terrible typist (maybe I should change that?) and it helps when you have long explicit variable names (sometimes I go overboard with this until I find better names)
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to be able to change the way the code looks
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to format the code to my will, even if it s stupid, I want to be able to try new things
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to be able to do simple **and **complex refactorings easily and that their result is obvious before we event start the operation
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good ctrl+z support
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to leverage what I know, and induce me to do smarter things, after all the IDE has intimate knowledge about the framework I m using
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that I can carry around my settings (shortcuts, templates, etc really easily)
am I dreaming? Possibly, but lets see whats possible